Balls Mahoney and Axl Rotten Diagnosed with CTE in Postmortem Examination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWiEvGzUhD8
Late Thursday night, The Boston Globe broke the news that for the first time since 2009, deceased professional wrestlers have been diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a post-mortem examination. According to the article, both John “Balls Mahoney” Rechner and Brian “Axl Rotten” Knighton were suffering from the degenerative neurological condition at the time of their deaths, though it was in the “early stages” in Knighton’s brain. MMA fighter Jordan Parsons, who recently died in a car accident, was also diagnosed as having CTE.
CTE is the modern name for the former dementia pugilistica, a specific type of brain damage caused by repeated blows to the head. Initially discovered in football player Mike Webster, the issue began to get significantly more attention when Chris Benoit was diagnosed with CTE a few months after his suicide. Later, in 2009, Andrew “Test” Martin was diagnosed with CTE after his passing, but no pro wrestler had been diagnosed with it since then. Rechner and (to a lesser extent) Knighton were both known for taking incredibly hard chair shots to the head.
Dr. Julia K. Kofler, a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian neuropathologist, made the diagnosis, which was communicated to the Globe by Dr. Bennet Omalu, who verified the results. Omalu did the examinations of Benoit and Martin, which WWE has refused to accept the results of in the past due to missing chain of custody records, which would have documented the provenance of the samples as being from Benoit. WWE refused to comment on the new findings pending its own review of the research.
WWE also intimated that Konstantine Kyros, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the “concussion” lawsuits against the company, pushed the story on the Globe to distract from court motions it filed this week asking for him to be sanctioned for misconduct. Kyros denied this when reached for comment.